Sound card issues

[DarkSideMoon]

Hi there, I have an onboard realtek AC '97 on my desktop, it's roughly 3 years old. One day, I think it was after a restart, I noticed my sound was now mono. I've tried all the settings, checked balance, nothing seemed to help. I did notice pulling the plug 1/4 of the way out of the jack fixed it. It is not only my speakers, it is my headphones as well, and I've ruled out a faulty jack as the one directly on the motherboard exhibits the same issue. I know it would be easier to just buy another sound card but it's not financially viable at the moment, and I can't stand mono sound much longer. Also, it's not truly mono, I can hear sound very very faintly in the other speaker.

Also, I have not tried in any of my other OS's as my linux partition killed itself and my vista partition has expired.

 

[cohen]

reinstall driver

 

[DarkSideMoon]

Didn't help unfortunately.

 

[cohen]

have you set the sound card to be the default drive?

 

[DarkSideMoon]

It is the only one that appears in the list, so I assume it is the default. Thanks for atleast attempting to help, on 3 forums this is the only thread that even got a response.

 

[cohen]

oh well then if there is only one then it is the mobo one so... the sound card has died or is faulty